Phone fraud is a billion dollar a year business and includes phone subscriber attempting to defraud the telephony carriers, telephony carriers attempting to defraud a subscriber, or a third party attempting to defraud either or both of them.
Often these fraudulent schemes involve the use of autodialers, which are electronic devices or software that automatically dial telephone numbers. Conventionally, once the call has been answered, the autodialer either plays a recorded message or connects the call to a live person. Thus, it is conventionally known for autodialers to play a pre-recorded message, which is often called “voice broadcasting”, or “robocalling.” It is also conventionally known for some voice broadcasting messages to ask the person system who answers to press a button on their phone keypad. One example of this type of technique used to reach out to people is opinion polls in which recipients are asked to press one digit if they support one side of an issue, or another digit if they support the other side. This type of call is often called “outbound interactive voice response.”
One lucrative and illegal fraudulent activity involves the use of autodialers and outbound interactive voice response techniques to steal from 1-800 number owners. In the United States, telephone carriers are paid a fee for connecting a call spanning their carrier network to a subscriber served by their network, with the charges billed to the called number or subscriber if the called number is a 1-800 or toll free number. Thus, in the case of calls being made to a 1-800 number, a fraudulent party working in connection with a telephone carrier potentially could auto-dial 1-800 numbers to generate fees paid to the telephone carder.
This may be done using auto dialers, which are electronic devices or software that automatically dial telephone numbers and, once the call has been answered, the autodialer plays a recorded message to maintain the call so as to generate “minutes” and associated fees billed to the 1-800 number owner and paid to the telephone carrier.
In order to thwart such fraudulent activities, the inventors have utilized conventionally available technology with their Interactive Voice Response (IVR) systems that requires a caller calling a 1-800 number to press a button on their phone keypad; this enables the IVR system to confirm that there is a live person, rather than an autodialer, on the voice call.
However, fraudsters using these autodialers have now determined that this confirmation scheme can be duped by programming the autodialer to emit one or more DTMF codes that would be emitted by a caller pressing one or more buttons on their keypad. In this way, the fraudsters are able to approximate or impersonate a live caller to the IVR system, thereby maximizing the period of time the call continues and increasing the fees charged to the 1-800 number owner.